Why Transaction Fees Are Quietly Killing Your Earnings as a Creator

People have come to expect that to sell content, you have to pay payment processing fees. The typical fees for domestic U.S. payments are 2.9% + $0.30, and for international payments, 3.9% + $0.30. That might not seem like a lot, which is exactly why people haven’t woken up to the fact that reliable payment alternatives are available that cost you 0% + $0.00.

Why should you care? Well, if you’re a creator selling $5 a month access to a group chat, for example, those payment processing fees are actually taking about 10% of your earnings, again for no reason. Think about that—a 10% tax on payments, which could be 0%!

That means you’re losing $0.50 per fan to transaction fees, which, if you have 1,000 fans paying that per month, you’re losing $500 a month for no reason. Over the course of the year, you would lose $6,000 just to fees! Again, for no reason!

Also, this doesn’t include the general 10% platform fees on other content platforms. If it were to include them, you’d lose 20% of your earnings per month! $5 goes to $4, $5,000 per month goes to $4,000 per month, and $60,000 per year goes to $48,000 per year.

That is why we use USDC as our default payment system at Sumu.

What is USDC?

USDC is a stablecoin, which is a digital currency pegged to some entity in value. For USDC, its value is pegged to the US Dollar. Therefore, every USDC is worth $1 and will always be worth $1, no matter how the dollar itself fluctuates in value.

We use USDC as payment because it has <$0.01 transaction fees (don’t worry, we pay them for you; 0% is 0%!), is near instant, can be used internationally with the same speed and cost as domestic payments would, and there are no middlemen—it is completely peer-to-peer.

Sounds pretty great, right? We think so, too, which is why we encourage every user to use and accept USDC as payment. Of course, should you have fans who don’t want to pay in USDC, we will offer traditional payment methods, but the fans will have to pay the fees.

Otherwise, they can take 60 seconds to set up their digital wallets to pay with USDC and never have to think about it again. Similarly, as a creator, if you’re new to stablecoins, we will help you set up your wallet in less than a minute and begin accepting fees instantly.

How Much Could You Earn with Sumu?

Since Sumu uses USDC as payment, there are 0% transaction fees, saving you the initial 10% in fees for that $5 group chat. You also pay only a 4.9% platform fee, so instead of paying 20% of your earnings to content platforms in this example, you pay only 4.9%.

So, instead of taking home $4 per subscriber, you’re taking home $4.75; instead of taking home $4,000 per month, you’re taking home $4,750; and instead of taking home $48,000 a year, you’re taking home $57,000 a year.

$9,000 in extra earnings just by switching to Sumu!

Also, these savings don’t include our reward system, which rewards creators with bonus USDC every month, as well as actual ownership in Sumu, the company.

So, if you want to wake up tomorrow and start saving $9,000 more per year, then join Sumu today!

Feel free to play with our earnings calculator to see how much you could earn with our low fee and zero transaction fee system compared to older platforms. Go to Earnings Comparison